“Today we will take a decision to allocate extra funds to pay wages in December. Everybody can be confident that we will celebrate the New Year as it should be – in a good mood and with optimism,” he said.

He noted that the government analyzed the situation with wage arrears.

“The situation is not critical, but acceptable,” Azarov said.

He instructed the Finance Ministry and the Social Policy Ministry to hold a meeting with heads of the regions to clarify the reasons of wage delays.

Ukraine’s statistics committee said on Tuesday the country’s wage arrears exceeded 896 million hryvni (over 100 million U.S. dollars) as of November 1, 2012.